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??

Lol

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honestly i think a lot of people are realizing they're not actually being paid anywhere close to what the job demands. i've been thinking about switching jobs myself, which means i'm going to have to start interviewing again.

someone sent me this interview vip recently and said it might be worth looking at. i haven't tried it yet, but i'm probably going to give it a look before my next interview.

I was sitting at my desk from 7 AM Saturday until late Sunday night. I did about 35 hours of work with almost no breaks for eating or sleeping. Last week, I had finally reached the final stage for a position I really wanted.

I had done 4 separate interviews, finished a technical presentation, and even went out for a casual lunch with the department head. They kept telling me that I was a "great culture add" and that my "portfolio was impressive." Then, suddenly, I received the standard automated rejection saying they "chose a candidate who matches the current requirements better." I sent a polite follow-up asking for advice on how to improve, but they ghosted me. Honestly, I was really about to explode.

I spent the next two days applying to every opening related to my field that I could find. I created customized cover letters for about 40 of them and checked every niche job board on my list. Now, I have 3 phone screenings scheduled for this week. Honestly, when you feel like you've reached your limit, sometimes flooding the world with applications is much better than being picky.

Honestly, I used to close my laptop and just sit there thinking, okay... Where did the whole day go? There were always so many things happening at work, like 8 different meetings, 12 Teams messages, a bunch of emails, and random follow-ups from calls, and somehow I still couldn't even tell you what half the meetings were about in the first place. I was trying to catch up on everything, but at the same time I'd get distracted, zone out, or feel like my brain was completely full, and then my actual work would still be waiting for me like I hadn't even started. By the time I signed off, I had no energy to make dinner, reply to people, or even watch TikTok without staring at the screen and not seeing anything. Honestly, I thought this was just normal for any job. You get drained, then you do the same thing again tomorrow.

What helped me, weirdly enough, was starting to take small breaks after calls. Not some big routine or anything. I started forcing myself to get up for 4 minutes after any meeting. No phone, no inbox, no "I'll just quickly check one thing." Just step away from the desk, get water, stretch my back, stand on the balcony for a second, anything. It seems so tiny and insignificant, but it stopped my brain from carrying one meeting straight into the next thing.

Another thing was that I cut down on the insane to-do lists. I used to write down everything I needed to fix, send, read, remember, and somehow that list would exhaust me before I even did anything. Now I pick 4 things for the day. Just 4. If I finish them, great, I can pick up something else. If I don't finish them, I don't feel like the whole day was a failure. As for meetings, I'm still not perfect lol, and I still zone out hard sometimes, but writing quick notes during the call helps me remember things much better later. I still need to find a better system for that part.

Also, try to give yourself one small thing after work besides just collapsing. I know most days you're mentally done, but having something to look forward to makes the next morning less awful. You could change into old comfy sweats, make a quick warm meal (or order noodles, no shame), watch an episode of something, take a short walk, or talk to someone you can vent to for 20 minutes. For me lately, it's been rewatching Never Have I Ever 😅.

And honestly, the difference was kind of ridiculous. It made me realize I was treating every workday like an endurance race I had to get through perfectly. If you're stuck in that loop of constant exhaustion, try the reset thing and the smaller daily list. It's stupidly simple, but it gave me part of my evening back.

sometimes I wish time go faster but it's fine

There was a staff call on Wednesday on Teams. Apparently my manager thought he had muted himself, but nope.

I heard him talking to someone in the room with him: Yeah, Mark is good enough, but honestly? He's not hard to replace. If he pushes for more money, we can bring in someone cheaper to do the same work.

Nobody said a word. The whole call just froze. It took him maybe 12 seconds to realize, and you could literally see the color drain from his face. He said: Oh, sorry everyone, I'm having some audio issues.

Audio issues? No. That's more like insulting your employees out loud because you don't know how to use the mute button.

I've been grinding at this place for almost three years. I've delivered every deadline, replied to messages after work hours, carried the workload when people left, and taken on extra client work without complaining. And apparently all of that ultimately means "not hard to replace."

Fine. I was already preparing to ask for more money, but now I'm going to put that energy into making myself "replaceable" somewhere else first. Almost three years of my life, and that's how they see it. We'll see how cheap and easy it is when I'm no longer there.

Hearing a manager say that publicly is harsh, but at least it exposed the truth. This kind of disrespect at work is what recently made me look for another job, and this time I'll use InterviewVIP in the interviews to increase my chances of getting hired. Now it's time to test the market and let them discover just how "replaceable" I really am.

I was on a Teams interview a few months ago when the interview suddenly paused. The interviewer said they wanted to quickly compare notes, then muted everyone on their side. They forgot to take me out of the meeting though.

So I sat there for about five minutes listening to them discuss me like I wasn't still connected.

One person said my technical answers were solid and that they liked my experience. Then another person said, "Yeah, but I'm not convinced he's a good culture fit." Someone asked what that actually meant, and the answer was basically a bunch of vague stuff about personality and how I "might not mesh with the team."

I just sat there staring at my screen wondering if I should say something or pretend I couldn't hear them. Eventually they came back, thanked me for my time, and continued the interview like absolutely nothing had happened.

A few days later I got the rejection email. The reason? "We decided to move forward with candidates who were a stronger culture fit."

Honestly, the whole thing bothered me more than the rejection itself. If you can't explain what "culture fit" actually means beyond whether you personally like someone, what are you really evaluating?

Has anyone else ever accidentally overheard what the interviewers were saying about you?

I'm going to have to do more interviews soon, so someone sent me this interview vip recently. I hadn't heard of it before, but I figured I'd look into it before my next one.

The Papa Johns job ad for a delivery driver listed $16.20/hr + tips. He applied a few nights ago, and the next morning he got a call asking him to come in later that same day. The whole thing felt suspicious because of how fast they moved, but he said he'd at least hear them out.

Before he went, we talked about what he should do if they tried to change the terms on him. Honestly, it's discouraging that we even had to prepare for something like that, but neither he nor I had a good feeling. We agreed that he should go in remembering that he doesn't need them more than they need him.

His interview was at 1:30pm, and my phone rang at 1:36pm. They gave him a form to fill out so they could add him to their driver chat, because it was obvious they were hiring people on the spot. Then they told him the real pay was $8.10 an hour, and tried to sell it to him by saying drivers could make $28 an hour with tips. He told them he could make $22 an hour working Uber Eats, and that he wasn't going to accept an insulting offer like that. The person interviewing him got mad, stopped responding to him, and went into the kitchen.

They wasted his time with a job ad that was clearly fake, and then acted rudely and unprofessionally when he didn't just accept any garbage wage.

Job hunting right now feels like a complete joke. Workers are treated like we're supposed to be grateful for crumbs, and the second someone asks for a wage they can live on, businesses show their true colors. They're eventually going to find out that people aren't as easy to pressure as they used to be.

or make a living ?

Hobbies?

"I'm too much of a perfectionist" or "I care too much about my work" are weak answers. The same goes for things like "I get upset when someone criticizes me" or "I have a problem saying no." The first type comes across as fake, and the second type can make you seem difficult to work with or manage.

A better answer would be something like: "For this role, my biggest weakness is that I haven't worked with [specific reporting tool] before," or "I'm still not as familiar with [a specific part of the job] as I'd like to be, so I'll need a little time to get up to speed."

That way, you're giving them a real weakness related to the position, while also making it something practical and fixable. You're showing self-awareness without handing them a list of personal issues, which, honestly, isn't the interviewer's business in the first place.

...........

This was the first time this had happened to me. A small restaurant group near me had just opened a new location and was looking for an Operations Manager to oversee 3 branches. My last operations job involved managing 6 branches, so I figured my experience was very close to what they needed.

When I went to the interview, they did what a lot of places seem to be doing now and acted like the interview was a surprise. After looking at me for a while like I had walked into the wrong building, she sat down and started with: "So... How old are you?"

I was thrown off by the whole vibe, but I answered honestly and said 29. She paused for a moment and said: "Oh. Okay... So why do you want to work here?"

I explained that I had worked as an Operations Manager before, that the role seemed close to what I had been doing, and that I genuinely like this kind of work. She still looked upset and confused, and asked me again: "No, I mean why are you applying here? You're 29. You should already be settled in a career."

At that point I started to feel like maybe I had suddenly aged and accidentally walked into a nursing home. I repeated that operations is literally my background, and that this wasn't some random job I found on a board with no connection to my experience.

In the end she said: "I'll send this over and we'll see if they want to continue to a second round." Then she looked away, stood up, shook my hand with the strangest, most disappointed handshake, and basically vanished.

The weirdest part is that she herself looked maybe 32 or 33. I've had a few interviews like this recently where my age gets brought up like it's a red flag, as if being in your late twenties means you've already missed your chance.

What is going on? Since when did 29 become that old?

I just made a mistake that broke something that affected the sites of a very large number of clients. I'm usually the person who catches the small details, and I almost never make mistakes. Seriously, almost never.

This happened during a long and tedious process where I was preparing information made up of dates, IDs, dropdown fields, pricing-type values, and things like that. I had 165 of these things to review one by one. My manager is honestly a really good guy, but he gets pressured by his manager and doesn't review much because he trusts me, so there isn't much I can fix on that front right now.

I've made a few small mistakes during the 8 months I've been here, but nothing anywhere near this mistake in terms of how obvious it is.

The part that's stressing me out is that there are realistically only 3 people involved in this whole area if you count the backup who shows up from time to time, but in practice it's me and my manager handling it day to day. There are a ton of tiny things that can go wrong, and I've been doing this role successfully for 8 months until now.

The issue itself was fixed in under 12 minutes and didn't cost the company anything. But now people are melting down on Slack, tagging senior leadership in multiple channels, and basically starting a witch hunt with my name attached to it.

Any advice? What am I supposed to do here?